AN: Development will be slow. These next few chapters in particular will deal more generally with post-war Konoha and life in the village. Let me know what you think!


Chapter Two: The Lost and Found

There was a strange transition period between sleeping and waking. It felt like forever and it felt like no time at all. She drifted peacefully towards consciousness, fuzzy blurs of color and shape appearing in her periphery. Before she knew it, she was absentmindedly regarding the space in front of her. It felt hazy and she was soon on the verge of falling back asleep. Then there was a strange tingling sensation like she was being watched. Her eyes were open again.

She was wide awake now and she felt her heartbeat start to rise and beat furiously as that strange tingling sensation didn't abate. There was something out there and it was watching her. The tingling grew and thickened into an ill tension that bore down upon her, a malevolent atmosphere that pinned her in place like an animal to be sacrificed. Something like a door opened in the vague horizon and a dark shape slithered through. It crept closer and closer to her. As it drew nearer, it grew more and more substantial, manifesting as a ghostly woman with long black hair. She could only watch in terror—why couldn't she move!—her mind screaming at her body to move move move away from that thing. Her mind pressed frantically against the confines of her body. But to no avail, her body was completely paralyzed and deaf to her will. Her heart leapt up and caught in her throat. The thing overcame her and pressed into her and was choking her and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't even look away from the pure malevolence that was smothering her. She tried to scream for help but only an empty noise escaped from the mouth that the demon was crushing.

Just when exactly was she supposed to wake up from this bloody nightmare?


Akira, Kotone, and little Nezumi spent two days recovering in the hospital, as per the general health insurance allotted to female chunin for which Akira was deeply grateful. Kotone, on the other hand, wasn't all too impressed. To the detriment of about a third of the ninja population, paid maternity leave wasn't on the books and it didn't look like Konoha's policymakers would make the push any time soon. What would all the new mothers in this latest baby boom do to support themselves? Well, hopefully they had clan backing or a male partner of some financial means, preferably a ninja ranked chunin or above. A lone genin couldn't possibly provide for a fledgling family.

Kunoichi, for all their contributions to society, were perpetually assigned the supplementary role—whether they "chose" to be medics, genjutsu support, teachers at the academy, or part of the intelligence or administrative divisions. Who among Konoha's leaders paid any attention to these honorable women who worked in the shadows, even more so than their male counterparts? There was a grand total of two women in the Konoha Council: Sarutobi Biwako and Utatane Koharu. Their number had decreased by one with the recent death of Uzumaki Mito. For the most part, these two remained tucked away in the ivory tower of government where they watched the village from afar. They hadn't witnessed firsthand, the way women had stepped in to take up the arms left behind by the men dying on the battlefield in this last war. They hadn't seen the extraordinary feats of bravery these kunoichi had performed as they paved the way for the heavy-hitting male ninja through their supporting abilities.

On one hand, Biwako-sama, a proud medic, remained in the fixed mentality that the woman's place was in the home—that she was first and foremost a mother, entrusted with the prodigious and noble task of bearing and raising the next generation of ninjas. This might have prompted her to push for maternity leave if she hadn't been married to the Sarutobi Hiruzen who was not only the Hokage, but also the head of a prestigious clan. So, to say the least, she was far removed from the working-class kunoichi who desperately needed both time and money to comfortably raise a child.

On the other hand, Koharu-sama was by and large a pragmatist, declaring that Konoha, as a hidden village, should devote its resources to its shinobi taskforce rather than frivolous expenditures such as maternity leave. Especially when one considered the costs of the last war and the reconstruction taking place, the allowance of maternity leave seemed a little silly and would simply have to take a place on the back burner for now. After all, new mothers were still quite functional. Those in a tight pinch would have to live frugally, take out a few loans, and perhaps take up multiple jobs.

Kotone was one of the many new mothers and she would need to return to work as soon as possible in order to retain her healthcare plan. She was in a strange and unfortunate position as a kunoichi partnered to a civilian. Unions between shinobi and civilians weren't looked upon too favorably and both parties generally kept to themselves. The difference in power was just too great. It seemed that civilians weren't all too fond of forging close relationships with trained killers who could lash out and accidentally kill a man for breathing wrong. A civilian who made the leap of faith and befriended a shinobi found that it was difficult to maintain that relationship since that shinobi could simply be deployed or killed, leaving the civilian none the wiser about their current relationship status. And on the shinobi's side, it was known that children born of these unions were often born with low chakra levels undesirable to those who wanted to be ninja. In rare cases, the fetus conceived by a male civilian and a female ninja possessing potent chakra would be killed in the womb, considered by the mother's chakra to be an invasive parasite in need of purging. In even rarer cases, the fetus would continue to grow and develop in spite of the chakra attempting to kill it in utero, but as a horribly deformed baby that would die shortly after birth. This was why some of Konoha's clans had a habit of inbreeding-so that the particular mutation forming their bloodlines would be preserved and so their children would be born with stable chakra coils and a plentiful amount of base chakra cultivated through years of scrupulous eugenics. It was a combination of logic and fear that kept civilians and shinobi in their respective social circles.

Kotone was a chunin who had a talent for finding and disabling traps. Akira was a librarian. How and why had they come together? Their romance hadn't really been all that romantic and they found that their story frequently bored listeners who wanted to hear sweeping, dramatic tales of forbidden love. She'd been a frequent visitor at the library because she was a bit of a history nut and was comforted by the smell of old books. Her spare time was better spent there than at the home haunted by her dead parents. He'd admired her long, black hair that was so striking against her pale skin and liked her direct personality and she'd been flattered by the attention and liked his unassuming friendliness. Perhaps they had married in the spirit of passionate love that had swept through the country. But for better or worse, they got along pretty well. And she hadn't been in any trouble of unwittingly committing infanticide via overzealous chakra. Her chakra levels were far too low for that to happen. Their troubles resided in the realm of finances. Akira was a librarian-his career wasn't well-respected or well-paid in such a military state. Kotone wasn't eligible to receive civilian maternity leave and she would return to active duty all out of shape and vying for the limited positions stationed in the premises of Konoha with legions of veterans.

New mothers aside, those veterans who had sustained debilitating injuries during the war were in a far worse position. Many shinobi came from the frontlines deaf, blind, mentally ill, missing limbs; an unlucky minority had a combination of these deficits. And, there was a far greater number of disabled shinobi returning home alive then there had been during the First War. Towards the tail end of this recent war, Konoha's leadership had implemented a mandate requiring medic-nin on all outgoing squads. This raised the survival rate, even if it meant that a ninja survived with a life-long disability.

Ninjas were tools. Like any tool, once a ninja was permanently damaged, it was cast aside indifferently and replaced. So, despite the vast numbers making up this specific demographic, disabled ninja were unduly neglected. For one thing, even if they wanted to work, they couldn't pass the physical exam which was one firm requirement for all ninja on active duty. And without active duty status, they weren't fit to receive health care benefits from the village. They had the option of taking up positions in the civilian sector, but this was undesirable for they had no work experience in the pertinent areas and really had no chance of competing with other more experienced civilians for these positions. It was a sad reality that abandoned with no job prospects, no healthcare to cover the considerable costs of therapy and treatment, and discarded by the very home they had fought for, most disabled veterans left Konoha to settle in small, rural villages spread throughout the Land of Fire to live out the rest of their lives in shame. Some committed suicide, seeing no way out.

But still, it was quite a remarkable thing in the world of shinobi for there to be an institutionalized healthcare system. Konoha had the premier healthcare system of all the shinobi nations. And by that, it was understood that Konoha had the only such healthcare system in all the shinobi nations. This was all due to Tsunade of the Sannin and Kato Dan.

Their efforts had resulted in a revolution in the world of medicine, the most obvious change being the mandated inclusion of medic-nin on all outgoing squads. But the biggest and perhaps most important change had been the imperative taken up by Konoha's leadership after the war ended, perhaps in honor of the once highly favored Hokage candidate. In the name of healthcare, Konoha was building a section in the Research and Development department that focused on village-sponsored prescription and over-the-counter medication for ninjas, and a laboratory dedicated to poison and antidote research. Birth-control techniques for both females and males were being standardized for recreational use. They were pushing for the establishing first aid as a required course at the Academy. Physical and psychiatric evaluations were held every six months for those on active duty. Mental health was being regarded more seriously and there was a counseling and therapy program underway.

Nevertheless, this initiative hadn't swayed Tsunade's decision to leave Konoha with Dan's orphaned niece. These changes had come far too late to save Nawaki. To save Dan.

Jiraiya was still somewhere in Ame, teaching some snot-nosed brats, and just another person missing from her life. Orochimaru had been there and he'd been horrified by Dan's death in his own way. He had watched helplessly from the side as she pumped her chakra into Dan, trying desperately to fill the hole in his chest. He had been there when the last of her chakra flickered uselessly and her hands remained in that deathly void, perhaps as a poor substitute for the missing heart. He was the one who had pulled her bloody, bloody hands out of Dan's chest and saw the mortality that defeated Dan, the ninja who had defied Death in separating his soul from his body, the mortality that defeated Tsunade, the greatest medical ninja in the world who had beaten away the deadliest poisons with the same hands that laid waste to the continent. He was the one who had plucked the bloodied necklace that had hung undamaged from Dan's neck, ironically whole unlike the man it had been charged with protecting. He was the one who'd pressed that pendant into Tsunade's limp, bloody hands. He'd watched as she'd stared at its perfection disbelievingly.

And then Orochimaru had fled, profoundly disturbed by the irrefutable, indomitable mortality he had witnessed. Of course he had encountered death before. At a young age, he'd been privy to the untimely deaths of his parents which was the first experience that had truly shaped his knowledge that human beings die—sometimes, quite unpredictably—and one's aspirations are all for naught beneath the constant threat of an imminent end. And he'd seen countless shinobi fall in droves. But he was especially plagued by the thought of Dan whose unassailable Spirit had so easily felled hundreds of shinobi during the war, whose Spirit had died just as easily with a fatal blow to his vulnerable body. Dan had been different. Dan had transcended the limits of the mortal body with his signature jutsu, but as it turned out, even he wasn't immune to death. And so, Orochimaru had fled. He'd fled from Tsunade, who reminded him of the inevitability of death with the haunted vacancy in her eyes and her skittish retreat from the vital liquid that fed life. He fled from the post-war reconstruction of the village and the new life that bloomed everywhere. He devoted himself wholly to a research spurred by a single question—what could defeat Death? If only he could find some jutsu, some technique that would ensure that his life's work was permanent, eternal, unforgotten.

So while Orochimaru was in Konoha, he too, wasn't there when Tsunade looked down at the damnable necklace that had returned to hang mockingly from her neck and fell into a cynicism that denied the utility of her discipline. He wasn't there to stop her when she fled from the memories of Dan that inhabited the various reforms—she saw Dan in the hospital, the laboratory, the pamphlets for birth control, the first aid classes that he had campaigned so fervently for.

A tired Hokage-sama had asked her to say. She'd scoffed bitterly at her old sensei and left anyway. For what good was a healer who couldn't save those she loved? Who couldn't stand the sight of blood?


Akira and Kotone walked home leisurely, with Kotone carrying a bundled Nezumi in her arms. Every few meters, they were stopped and greeted with congratulatory pats on the back for Akira, gentle shoulder rubs for Kotone, and delighted coos for their new baby. Their well-wishers marveled at the plentiful fluff of black hair that graced Nezumi's head, the nose that was so clearly Kotone's, and the forehead that strongly resembled Akira's. And they laughed at the suspicious way the little infant regarded their unsolicited violations of her personal space. Kotone smiled graciously and Akira laughed sheepishly at the congratulations they received.

"Wow, you look great as always Kotone." one woman said, lightly. "No hair falling out or anything!"

Kotone preened a little at the comment. She took pride in maintaining a clean, orderly appearance and pushing a human being out of her pee-hole wasn't going to change that. Before they left the hospital, she had fussed a bit over her still un-flat stomach, but Akira had assured her that no one would notice over the baby. She'd whacked him grumpily on the head—Akira, that socially inept moron. "You're supposed to tell me I look beautiful!"

But still, he was unfailingly observant of the faint stress lines that appeared on the corners of her mouth when she was tired, and she was grateful when he disengaged them from their friends and set a deliberate pace as they walked away.

And then, when they were only a few blocks from their destination, they stopped for two figures—a man with a face tight with worry and a long, shaggy white ponytail, and a woman with a pained smile and one hand resting on her very pregnant belly. With the other, she had his hand in a fierce grip that caused pinpricks of phantom pain in Akira's own hand and he winced sympathetically for the white-haired man.

"Ah! Sakumo, Miyako!" called Kotone. "Has it started?"

"No!" Miyako shook her head emphatically. "Sakumo's just being a worrywart. The baby's not due for another three weeks". And then Miyako gasped and her knees buckled as a contraction rippled through her. Sakumo wrapped his arm around her to support her and sighed.

"You're in labor, don't fight me." Miyako had evidently been robbed of speech and fight as she didn't protest when Sakumo picked her up.

He nodded distractedly to Kotone and Akira. "She started having contractions about 4 hours ago and she's been fighting me since. I'm taking her to the hospital."

"Oh, and congratulations" he said warmly, glancing at the infant Kotone was carrying. Then he was striding past them with Miyako in his arms.

They turned to watch him go, scattering groups of academy children freed from another day in prison. The children squawked, their cheerful impressions of the Shodaime rudely interrupted by the famous White Fang carrying an ailing pregnant woman who waved contritely at their shocked exclamations.

Kotone shook her head fondly. "That man. Always leaving such an impression." Then her expression clouded a little. "They'll be okay right? Three weeks is premature, but it's not that bad", she mused to Akira.

He slung an arm around her shoulder and began leading her to their apartment. "They'll be okay. Now let's go and get Nezumi settled. She looks a bit peaky", he said looking down her shoulder and at the squirming baby before meeting Kotone's inquiring gaze.

"You too", he said teasingly, lightly thumbing the tired lines around her mouth. "Nezumi's going to grow up thinking you're her grandmother, if you keep frowning like that."

Thwack.